22,000 fined for drunken driving in Delhi

New Delhi, Nov 25 (IANS) Over 22,000 people were fined for drunken driving in Delhi this year, the "highest ever" penalisation for the offence in the capital, and a rise of 50 percent over the last year, police said Sunday.

The Delhi Traffic Police page on social networking site Facebook, which has close to 1.5 lakh followers, shows that a total of 22,111 drunk drivers were prosecuted till Nov 15 this year as compared to 15,474 in the corresponding period last year.

A total of 6,173 offenders have been jailed this year − an increase of a whopping 135 percent over the last year's figure of 2,685.

"The way we are going, we may touch 25,000 prosecutions owing to the New Year frenzy when a lot of people drink and drive. This is the highest ever prosecution for drunken driving in Delhi," Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Satyendra Garg posted on Facebook.

"Delhi Traffic Police is committed to make roads safer and we have succeeded in that as there is a huge decline in accidents this year. This decline in accidents is unprecedented third year in a row," he added.

A recent report by NGO Community Against Drunken Driving (CADD) says that over 90 percent of Delhi's youth hold the city police responsible for the high number of drunken driving cases, accusing them of being corrupt and casual.